Nina Y. Lee
22 September 2010
Crimson, Gold, Lavender, Grey, Blue. Color! Color is a very essential part to practically every painter; it brings life to almost any dull or boring image. Painter and director Julian Schnabel creates a colorful remembrance of his friend, Artist Jean Michael Basquiat in the autobiographical film, Basquiat. The film depicts life for the young painter in the ruthless streets of New York. Although for this film the colorful paintings of Basquiat were not the only lively fixation in this seemingly tragic film about Jean Michael Basquiat, an artist who rose too fast. Schnabel designs sharp, vivid images scented of downtown New York in the 1980's, he creates a beautiful portrait of Basquiat, but fails to go into Depth of the main character which left me with an empty feeling.
The movie begins with Basquiat as a little boy in a somewhat magical setting. This whole scene threw me off track because I had no idea what was going on, but I assumed the questions I had about it would be answered through the progression. Fast forward ten years and we see a much older Basquiat (Jeffrey Wright) submerge out of a box into a New York City park. This “out of the box” scene for me foreshadowed the uniqueness Basquiat’s art career will embed. But it still left me with the question, why did he wind up sleeping in a cardboard box in a park? I recall being told that Basquiat came from a middle-class family. He then ends up going to a local diner, and begins to “paint” using the diner’s table as his canvas and a bottle of pancake syrup as his paint. His eyes wonder to find a beautiful waitress (Gina Cardinale), he gets her attention and after several encounterments they move in together. We witness Basquiat hustle to get his painting seen, whether through his graffiti or by selling miniature art pieces to the renowned artist Andy Warhol ( David Bowie). Through some coincidental events Basquiat ends up being “discovered”. Through this he becomes very close friends to revolutionary artist Andy Warhol. But the road to fame is not all glitz and glamour for Basquiat as we see him struggle from with his addiction to drugs, to him not wanting to be called a “black” painter. I wanted to know more about Basquiat, who was the man behind the paintings? Why did he paint? Why did he not want to be known as a black painter? So many unsolved questions.
Each of the actors intricately hyperbolized the character they were playing, but for the sake of the film, it works very well. Basquiat vicariously lives through Jeffrey Wright, the Tony Award winner for his role as the nurse Belize in ''Angels in America,'' and a star of ''Bring In da Noise, Bring In da Funk,''. Wright did an illustrious job at capturing Basquiat’s personality perfectly! Alongside an extensive cast including: David Bowie, Dennis Hopper, Benicio Del Toro and Parker Posey. Even Courtney Love appears briefly as an unusually confident groupie. The characters all did a great job at telling the story, alongside some of the hip film shots Schnabel invents.
The shots Schnabel uses in the movie are energetic and lively, almost allowing one to forget the heartbreaking tone that lies within the subtext of the film. Schnabel uses the music as another way of expression. The songs chosen seem to be a part of Basquiat, from Rolling Stones' "Waiting on a Friend" to Henyrk Górecki's third symphony. It brings you into him almost dream like, the songs flow as like if they were being painted by Basquiat himself.
Basquiat's personal background remained obscure to me. I got very little feel for his work habits and almost no feel for his art. In one scene between Basquiat and Andy Warhol, Basquiat claims to be clean and there is a suggestion that his work has been on the decline at that point. I believe this scene incognito told us that while Basquiat used drugs his work was brilliant, when he was clean his work was lacking. Jean Michael Basquiat dies at the end of the movie from a heroin overdose. And by the end of the movie I had more questions about Basquiat than I did in the beginning.
